Japan's nuclear disaster

Meet the Fukushima 50? No, you can’t

IT HAS taken the Japanese government more than 18 months to pay tribute to a group of brave men, once known as the “Fukushima 50”, who risked their lives to prevent meltdowns at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant from spiralling out of control. But when the prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, belatedly offered official thanks to them on October 7th something strange was afoot: six of the eight men he addressed had their backs to the television cameras, refused to be photographed and did not introduce themselves by name, not even to Mr Noda (see the image below).

The reason: officials from the government and from Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) quietly admitted that the men wanted to keep their identities secret because they were scared of stigmatisation for being involved in the disaster, such as might lead to the bullying of their children and grandchildren. But Tepco is also muzzling them, presumably for fear that what they say will further discredit the now nationalised company. When I asked if I could at least hand my business card to them to see if they wanted to tell their side of the story, an irate Tepco spokesman answered bluntly: “Impossible.”

There are numerous ways that this incident reflects badly on both Tepco’s and the government’s handling of the situation. Firstly, there is the contrast between the frontline worker’s behaviour and the brazen hypocrisy of Tepco’s management after the accident. I remember Tepco’s then-chairman, Tsunehisa Katsumata (now thankfully retired), nonchalantly blaming everyone but himself when giving testimony to a Diet commission earlier this year.

Meanwhile, the men who worked loyally for him, risking their lives on behalf of his company, still hide their heads in shame.

The government, for its part, has done these men a huge disservice by not acting more quickly to differentiate their heroism from the craven self-interest of the company’s bosses. In the eyes of the public there ought to be no confusion between the two. In Chile, it was easy to see how the country made heroes of the 33 trapped mine workers in 2010, while making villains of their bosses. Nothing like that has happened in Japan. As one government official noted, if this were America, the “Fukushima 50” would have been invited to the Rose Garden for presidential recognition.

An English-language paper, the Japan Times, today at least tells part of their harrowing story, though it doesn’t mention the refusal of all but two of them to be identified. They did not depict themselves as heroes, as they recounted their experiences to Mr Noda. They mostly sounded plain scared. One said he thought “it was all over” after the tsunami of March 11th, 2011 knocked out all the power. Another told of how he sent his staff out into the dark, where they faced the danger of electrocution, to restore the power to a nuclear reactor on the verge of melting down. He was asked by his men whether he thought they would come back alive. They went on regardless.

But the headlines, ultimately, refer back to Mr Noda, not to the Fukushima 50. He gets more of the credit than they do, despite his wooden acknowledgement to the men, that “Thanks to your dedication, we have managed to preserve Japan.” This is one of the tragic flaws of modern Japan. The media attention is always focused on those in power, who typically do nothing to merit the recognition. The multitudes on the frontline, who put their heads down and do all the hard work are treated as faceless, nameless and ultimately forgotten.

The main reason the men mentioned turned their backs to the cameras has to do with their shame. The security tapes of the control room after the disaster shows a comedy of errors. None of these men did anything but keep their seats warm. The reactor shut down automatically after the earthquake which is fortunate because none of the men in the room would have had the courage to shut it down on their own call.

The reactors overheated and blew up because after the failure of the backup generators, the backup battery system was to run the pumps. But none of these 50 men ever thought to keep track of the condition of the batteries, so the second line of backup failed as well.

In the control room audio you can hear the controllers debate how and where to get more batteries. Once they do the very-unfamiliar-to-a-Japanese act of making a simple decision without going up the chain of command, they discover that there is no money in the till to buy batteries. These leads to a lengthy discussion as to how to get the money. Eventually they agree to pool their money, which isn't very much as Japanese housewives don't give them more than enough each day to pay for more than lunch and a couple of drinks. But even after the decision to poo, the money, a choice on how the IOU must be made. The nearest place that has car batteries is a 6 hour round trip, and by the time all the I's are dotted, it's too late to get to the hardware store before it closes, so getting the battery is put off until the next day.

By the next day it is too late.

Amazingly, not one of these "brave 50" suggests using one of the numerous batteries from the numerous cars parked in the parking lot.

Japan has long haf one of the worst safety records in the nuclear power industry, due partly to the ridiculous culture of no one daring to take any kind of risk or make any substantive decision, even in the depths of a crisis.

Although Japan has a tendency to be dishonest with its own history maybe future generations will be able to properly honor these people and use the experience as cautionary tale of national shame.

That said, these men did not just save Japan but most of the surrounding countries. If S. Korea or China really want to aggravate Japan they should invite the 50 over to their countries and bestow honors upon them, especially since their home country won't.

Please do not equate Japan with other Asian countries, consisting of more than a billion people, several different cultures and centuries of different historical development.

Japan is extremely unique in its strange definition of shame and honour. If your sweeping generalization about 'Confucian' societies held any water, why is Japan the only country in Asia with what some call 'a cult of death'? Even now, many Japanese feel that honour lies in killing themselves over things that embarrass them. In countless ways, Japanese culture differs radically from the cultures of the Asian mainland (and in my opinion, in a way not suited to the 21st century).

Furthermore, it is incredibly ignorant to assert that China, South Korea or Thailand are Confucian states. What really baffles me as an Asian is the tendency of know-it-all westerners to categorize all Asian societies as 'Confucian', without acknowledging the transformational effect that Communism (China), Christianity (Korea) or modern capitalism (all) have had on developing a new, modern Asian civilization. This would be akin to claiming that the West is Christian, which is true in many senses but also false in its failure to acknowledge the impact of the West's 20th-century secularization.

So stop being such an insufferable know-it-all, please?

PS. How can you even claim that Thailand has ever been within the Confucian sphere of influence?

If the seawater had not been used, the world would have experienced at least as much radiation, and a great deal more damage. There is plenty of radiation in the natural world and the "millions of gallong" is a drop in the ocean, you might say.

Ordinary people are far too frightened of radiation they do not understand. I have visited Dounreay and stood on the glass above the reactor core which was perfectly visible, and been told that the rainwater from the roof after Chnobyl had to be captured and decomtaminated due to the special regulations which did not qpply to nearby houses.

I have visited Torness nuclear power station where a friend of mine was safety officer, there is no radiation issues but I hear stupid jokes about "glowing fish"

Yes there have been bad accidents but the cumulative effect of burning coal is worse, as it releases not only chemical hazards like mercury and sulphur dioxide, but also radioactivity which is at a low level but multiplied by huge quantities.

What happened was, these heroes ran millions of gallons of sea water through the plant to cool it off. This measure saved Japan but exposed the world to millions perhaps billions of gallons of radio active waste. Thank you heroes.

In Japan, it is spectacularly rare to single out individual contributors for their work; all great efforts are considered by default to be team efforts. Given the public outcry against Tepco across Japan and the rest of the world, it might well embarrass the 50 to be singled out or named as the heroes of the disaster.

Additionally, and possibly more darkly, the Fukushima 50 are likely not entirely Japanese; in Japan, Chinese and other non-locals typically handle the dirtiest tasks in Japan. Pictures of their faces might indicate that they used gaijin to clean up Japan's mess.

I've been following the F. Daiichi situation through Japanese links every day for 18 months, and these men have been extolled in the Japanese Press numerous times during that period. It's the western Press that's fallen down on the job, if you will. Further, their stigmatization has little to do with TEPCO management, per se. The Fukushima workers are considered to be part of a company-wide responsibility for the accident itself...they are just as responsible as anyone. If one works for TEPCO, then one is a culprit. Period! This is exacerbated by confusion between reactors and bombs...the Hiroshima/Nagasaki survivors are "hibakusha"...tainted by bomb radiation, therefore to be avoided at all costs. The same afflicts the people working at BOTH Fukushima nuclear power stations as well as the evacuees from the no-go zones. It's a clear case of unmitigated bigotry! Plus, Japan Today is one of the admitted anti-nuclear papers out of Japan (96% are admittedly "anti" based on a recent Asahi Shimbun poll), so they only cite the one man who feared for his life because it fits the journalisticm agenda. Is the exception ever the rule? Hey...get your staff up to speed by researching my ongoing updates at http://www.hiroshimasyndrome.com/fukushima-accident-updates.html...the #1 Fukushima Updates site on the internet (by Google).

TE banyan calls them ‘incredibly unsung heroes’, but calling them ‘incredibly foolhardy suicide bomber victims’ would be far more appropriate.
.
Bit by bit and piece by piece, japan is taking advantage of slack time of the gradual us decline in global influence to busy bee japan’s ambition to build itself a nuke arsenal. It’s too bad that these guys are made victims for japanese politicians plotting of resurgence of juapanese militarism that in the end will threaten american presence in japan to say nothing else.
.
The purpose of renewing Japanese militarism is two fold:
.
#1. taking advantage of the increasing us reliance on japan for the us ‘china containment’ in east asia, japan is quietly bargaining for and chipping it away more leeway in japanese military posturing, including building up of its conventional weaponry and the unconstitutional nuke capability, to devise an ‘escape chute’ from the us mother ship when the time arrives deemed by japanese.
.
Power generation my foot, for its such a tiny geographical area, japan has built a whopping 54 nuke reactors if not more, yet together they generated less than 25% of Japanese electricity. ask france (with 70% of nuke-fired electricity), if that’s ‘japanese joke’.
.
#2. japan is trying to counter china which fits american current scheme of things. but lo and behold, using that as some pretext, japan is preparing itself for that moment of leaving the protection umbrella of the us by leaving the us unprepared, whether the us like it or not.
.
The world members should be alarmed of recent insidious japanese moves, including china and south korea, but more so for the us who has been stationing troops and bases over japan for about 70 years and has grown dangerously complacent about it.
.
‘ pearl harbour! Pearl harbour! Pearl harbour! ‘ anyone?

Fukushima 50 is the alias given by the (Western) media to a group of employees at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Following the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, a related series of nuclear accidents resulted in a serious fire at the plant's unit 4 on 15 March 2011, these 50 employees remained on-site after 750 other workers were evacuated.[1][2]

After TEPCO management proposed withdrawing all its employees from the plant on 14 March,[3] additional manpower was deployed from around Japan.[4] Some workers traveled on clear roads by convoy from Tokyo.[4] When they arrived, hundreds of firemen, SDF personnel and employees of TEPCO, convened 20 km from the plant and debated how to best stabilize the plant.[4] On the night of 15 March, these workers joined the original Fukushima 50. In the following days, extra workers continued to be added, and the Fukushima 50 remained the name used by media to refer to the group of workers at Fukushima.

The number of the workers involved rose to 580 on the morning of 18 March[1] as staff from the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant and workers installing the new power line joined in. More than 1,000 workers, firefighters and soldiers were toiling at the site on 23 March.[5][6]

Japan first nuclear disaster was the two atomic bombings in 1945. The second nuclear disaster was caused by an earthquake in 2011. The first nuclear disaster could have been avoided if Japan did not launched a war of conquest in Asia. The second nuclear disaster could have been avoided if Japan did not build nuclear power stations in an earthquake prone place. Japan didn't make good choices. There is a saying "Man makes plans, God Laughs'. Evil begets evil.

only a japanese imperialism loser would smear vicious lies like that, for japan is the surrender and is still without a country that's independent and free they could call home, and without an end in sight too.
.
you'd better get over it and work hard for japan's future instead.

Hollywood should make a movie about these men. They'd be surprised how a realistic film about faceless foot soldiers saving the day would do well in an era where workers everywhere feel under-appreciated.

A film like that would be downright subversive at an operation like Foxconn.